The Millennials

Millennials are the most talked about demographic for brands, and they should be. Brands need the audience of the demographic group that are most engaged with new media formats and trends. The older generation, on the whole, are just not there yet, but they are on their way.

Millennials are the most clued up of anyone on earth. They are the business founders, the trendsetters and the word spreaders, not only are they the people of today but they are the people we will still be advertising to in the next 20 years.

It was estimated in early 2016 that a third of millennials will start and run their own company. They are not lazy and they crave success, on the most part. When buying from a brand 3 things take precedence: Value for money, the quality of the product and the product fit to their personality; with quality coming highest on the ‘brand love-o-meter’. So advertising to such a demanding crowd will leave anything less than the best in the dust.

So how do we advertise towards them? We have to be versatile and constantly experimental – breaking the rules of traditional advertising. Advertising dos and don’ts are constantly being rewritten. And with millennials, we are looking at a crowd that don’t want to be advertised at, as a brand it is all about being the thing that they are interested in and relevant. No point in trying the hard sell, because they won’t bite.

Tens is a sunglasses brand that was started up by millennials who understand their audience; they are the travellers, the festivalgoers, the go-getters. The young start up is making waves with its engaging social and branded content, and their 2015 film was a brilliant clash of 80s cheese and retro chic; highly relatable to the millennial crowd currently going through the retro and vintage revolution. They also have a significant USP with their filter lenses. The brand has lifestyle very close to its heart, and it will be interesting to see where it goes with it as it grows.

Similarly, Atomic created an integrated campaign for a government funded anti-piracy initiative that ran in print, online, social and cinema, we want to create a piece of content that would be entertaining and sharable, not just an ad. Millennials were the target audience, and we realised early on that you can’t tell these people what to do, so we presented them with a choice, one leading to a world full of creativity and the other was a world without. The end product was a burst of colour that stood out in the TV ad-break, and kindled a debate around the issue of piracy.

On a big brand level, global brands have launched campaigns with the intention of only engaging with millennials as well. Coca-Cola in Australia wanted to connect with a younger audience over the summer, so #ColourYourSummer was created. They found that young people were not drinking Coke, and wanted to change it, so they became a part of something that millennials can do without, their mobiles. Using mobile as a point of entry they were able to get into the pocket of their audience. The integrated campaign launched by offering content to those who used the ads as codes through image recognition; the content included music, games and videos.

Mobile is the one of the most accessible and successful ways in when it comes to the millennial audience. So McDonald’s used Snapchat, one of the world’s fastest growing mobile social platforms. By creating its own filters on the platform it was able to gain brand exposure to millions of users. Numerous other brands have featured filters on the platform as well. Snapchat has come a long way from just being a photo-sharing app – it is now a place where brands offer their news feeds directly in the app. Snapchat one of the most important and current gateways to consumable content because if its interactive nature, making it the perfect platform for brands seeking younger audiences.